The Quest for a Better Online 'Community'

Remember Justine Sacco? In December 2013, while sitting in Heathrow Airport, she tweeted: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” She had 170 Twitter followers. No one reacted to her crude crack at her own entitlement. She boarded her flight. Eleven hours later, she landed in Cape Town and turned on her phone. The first thing she saw was a text message from an old friend: “I’m so sorry to see what’s happening.”

While Sacco had been airborne, her tweet had gone horrifically viral. It had stirred up a storm of smug indignation and gleeful anger. A hundred thousand people had tweeted their condemnation, calling her disgusting, stupid, and racist (for a start). The hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet had trended. “All I want for Christmas,” typed one member of the mob, “is to see @JustineSacco’s face when her plane lands and she checks her inbox/voicemail.” Sure enough, someone took a photo of Sacco arriving in Cape Town, and that went viral. She promptly lost her job.

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